Of all the items on a wiseguy's summer to-do list, it's the last one that means the most. Self-scout. I have a buddy who is a real sports journalist, not an editor like me who just pretends with his little column. He covers the NFL and said a coach once told him the most important thing his staff does is, during a bye week, break down its own film to understand its own tendencies it may not even be aware of game to game and down to down.

Because, the truth is, it's a lot harder to get beat if you don't beat yourself. "By doing these things, you are learning about yourself," says Sal Selvaggio of madduxsports.com, "and your biases."

Everyone has biases. During the Norv Turner era in San Diego, I was a sucker for the Chargers -- no matter how much I knew better. Maybe you won all year with underdogs and were a coin flip when betting on the favorites. You don't know until you dig in and do the work. "That review is something a lot of people doing this casually don't love to do," says Sal.

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

Chad Millman

Chad Millman, Editor in Chief of ESPN The Magazine, joined The Mag as an associate editor in 1998. A year later he left to write "The Odds" -- about a trio of Vegas bookmakers and wiseguys -- and to find riches working for an Internet company. He made tens of dollars on "The Odds," the web biz tanked and he returned to The Mag. He also worked at Sports Illustrated and wrote some other books, including "Iceman" with Chuck Liddell, "Invincible" with Vince Papale, "Pickup Artists" with Lars Anderson, and "The Detonators." His most recent books are the national bestseller "The Ones Who Hit the Hardest," about the blood feud between the 70s Steelers and Cowboys, written with Shawn Coyne, and the New York Times bestseller "They Call Me Baba Booey", with Gary Dell'Abate.

Millman's daily blog explores the culture of sports gambling; on Mondays and Fridays in the fall, he investigates trends in point spreads related to professional football.